


Avenue of Changing Dreams

by romanticalgirl



Category: Homicide: Life on the Street
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-12-05 07:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/720407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/pseuds/romanticalgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ain't no way for you to fly/with her hanging on your feet</p>
            </blockquote>





	Avenue of Changing Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to[](http://inlovewithnight.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://inlovewithnight.livejournal.com/) **inlovewithnight** for the beta. I've only seen through S6, so please don't spoil me.
> 
> Originally posted 5-25-09

Adena Watson.

Tim sees her sitting on the edge of his bed, her dark eyes shadowed by the bright fluorescent lights above them. Her red coat seems wrong somehow, still wet from the long-ago rain.

“No.”

He’s never heard her voice. It’s strange to have never heard it and yet still know someone so well, to know every intimate detail of her life, her last day except the most important thing of all.

“No?”

She shakes her head slowly, her thick pigtails waving defiantly. There’s no blood. She looks beautiful. “You’re not dead.”

“I’m not.” Tim looks around at the sad, unguarded faces of his friends. Gee and Munch, Meldrick and Stivers and Falsone. He keeps looking from one side to the other, trying to pinpoint the vague dread he can taste at the back of his throat. “Then why are you here?”

“I’m always here.” She smiles and it’s like the smile in the picture he has at home, like the one on top of the case file.

“Why me?” Tim doesn’t know where the words come from, since it’s the one question he knows _he_ has no right to ask _her_.

“I needed you, Detective Bayliss.” She has a slight lisp, soft and barely there. “Just like you needed me.”

“No.” He shakes his head and he’s surprised it doesn’t hurt. “I never needed you. I never wanted you.”

She looks around the hospital room, her eyes landing on each detective in turn. “Who else would have taken care of me the way you did?”

“Anyone else would have given you peace. Anyone else would have solved it. Howard had almost 100 percent clearance rate. She would have done it. She would have gotten the arabber to confess.”

She reaches out and her fingers area strangely warm on his skin. “They let you carry it, carry the weight on your shoulders, but you know them now, don’t you? They would have solved it if they could have. No one wants you haunted.”

“Is that why you’re here? You’re haunting me?”

She smiles again and something aches all the way through him. “I don’t have a choice,” she tells him, her voice fading like a distant echo. “You won’t let me go.”

**

He thinks he sees Ballard at some point, and she’s looking at him like she’s not quite sure what to make of him. He’s used to it by now. No one’s ever quite gotten who he is, what he is. Frank’s probably the closest one, the only real friend Tim has, but Tim knows that’s gone now. Saving Frank’s life killed their friendship. Tim has seen too many of Frank’s weak moments, been there once too often to see something fail – his body, his brain, his speech, his nerve. As hard as he is on himself, Frank is even harder on those who love him, his partners.

“He loves you too.” Beau Felton is leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. “That’s the problem with partners. They always kill you in the end. Human bastards with their own pain and problems, bleeding into your life.”

“Not Frank.”

“No?” Beau scoffs. “We all bleed, Bayliss. Even the great and mighty Pembleton.”

“You broke Kay’s heart.”

“That’s what partners do, Timmy. Ask Meldrick. Ask Munch. They watch your back until they stab you in it, right through the ribs, deep in the heart.”

“And then what?”

Beau smiles, blue eyes shining beneath the shaggy fall of dark bangs. “And then they disappear.”

**

Tim’s dad is there, his eyes sharp and disapproving. It’s nothing new, and the familiarity of his disappointment is almost a relief.

“I never lied.”

“You tried to destroy a good man.” His father looks at the crowd gathered outside Tim’s room. “He’s family, Tim. You don’t turn on family.”

“He touched me, Dad. He came into rooms alone with me and touched me. He molested me, Dad. You don’t do that to family either.”

“You made him do it then! He wouldn’t otherwise!”

“I was _five_!” Tim winces in pain and slumps back to the bed. “I couldn’t force anyone to do anything. I was five.”

“Look at your mother.” His father is at the door looking at her. “She looks like hell.”

“Yeah, well, her son just got shot.”

“You don’t take care of her. Too busy with your ‘lifestyle’.” He sneers at everyone, keeping his gaze averted from Tim. “I suppose you’ll blame that on someone else too, won’t you?”

“Strange.” Tim’s fingers trace the wrinkles in the white sheet. “My uncle loves me too much, and my father can’t manage it at all.”

“Is that what you’re hoping to find?” His father’s eyes leave a residue of disgust on Tim’s skin.

“Someone to love me, Dad? Isn’t that what all of us want? What we’re all looking for?”

“Your problem, Tim, is that you wouldn’t know it if you found it. You’d always want something more. And if, by chance, you did find it? You’d screw it up. That’s what you do, Tim. It’s what you do.”

**

Kellerman’s not dead.

At least Tim doesn’t think he is. He’s not sure what happened after. He doesn’t remember anything except Frank, solid and heavy and yet so careful, so gentle. Tim felt like Olivia must when Frank holds her, like she might break. Tim’s been broken for a long time.

Kellerman, like Ballard, doesn’t say anything, so Tim’s as sure as he can be right now that Kellerman’s not dead. He wants to ask him if they got Georgia Rae, if they got the guy that shot him, but he’s afraid of the answer, more afraid of the fact that none of it matters. Tim counts dead bodies, names in black and red, since Luther Mahoney went down. He wonders if, like Crossetti, they’ll leave his name on the board, his cases waiting for someone else to stumble across the moment when something breaks. Or maybe when his name goes from red to black, he’ll be gone.

“You’re not dead. I told you that.” Adena’s sitting on the counter by the small metal sink, swinging her feet. “You’re funny, Detective Bayliss.”

“Why are you here, Adena?”

“I’m always here. I don’t want you to be lonely.”

“Where’s Frank?”

“You saved Detective Pembleton’s life, Detective Bayliss. You were really brave.”

“I was wearing my vest. I wasn’t brave.”

“It’s hard to be brave sometimes.” She looks directly at him, and Tim remembers being half her age, young and scared and alone.

“I’m sure you were very brave.”

“I was too scared to cry. I was a good girl, Detective Bayliss, but I knew enough of what he was doing to be scared.”

“Who, Adena? What _who_ was doing?”

“You see, Detective Bayliss?” She hops off the counter and comes over to him, her smile blinding and her touch like a whisper as she grabs his hand. “You’re almost there.”

“Almost where?” He struggles to sit up as she takes a step back, fading into the shadows. “Adena! Almost where?”

“Don’t be afraid, Detective Bayliss. That’s what you said to me once. ‘Don’t be afraid, Adena’.”

“But I haven’t found him!”

“But I found you.” She laughs and the room goes white with the sound. “So I’m not afraid at all.”

**

Meldrick is talking, charming Tim’s mother. Tim can see it in the way his mom laughs, the way she forgets for a moment where she is. Meldrick is the smoothest talker of all of them except for Gee, able to put someone at ease with his easygoing nature. Tim can’t hear what he’s saying, but he’s grateful to Lewis all the same. It’s easier if his mom’s all right.

“I solved it, didn’t I?” Tim turns his head and William Mariner is there, standing at the whiteboard, erasing Tim’s doctor’s name, his nurse’s name, his medications, his blood pressure recordings. There are lines and a hangman’s noose, and Tim watches the too-familiar letters get filled in one by one. “I solved it at the end.”

“You solved it.”

“You understand, don’t you?” He looks at Tim, eyes dim with worry and confusion, forehead furrowed with concern. “You understand having to solve it. The answer was there.”

“It’s not always.” Tim looks away, the sound of rifle fire in his head. He can differentiate between them all – 9 mm, 32, rifle, shotgun. He knows the curve and feel of all of them, rates expert marksman with them all. “Sometimes there is no answer.”

“They had to die. To figure it out. I had to figure it out.”

“Sometimes there’s nothing to figure out.” Tim feels anger pulsing through him. “Sometimes you just die. There’s no rhyme or reason. Sometimes it’s just because you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes it’s just because someone’s had a crappy day. Sometimes it’s just because you didn’t get out of the way in time. There’s no _reason_.”

“There’s always a reason.”

“There’s no reason for little girls to die. No reason for boys and girls and innocents to die. You think about all the terrible, horrific people who live, who get away with it all, and you tell me the reason!” He hears a distant beeping but he’s too angry to care. “I was doing my job. I was upholding the law. I was trying to stop more people from dying. You tell me the reason for that!”

“Good men have to die.” Mariner turns and looks at him, stares at Tim down the sight of his rifle. “If only the bad men died, no one would care.” He squeezes the trigger slowly, breathing out as he does. It’s excellent form and Tim can appreciate it in the heartbeat before it fires.

**

“You don’t get to die.” Tim blinks and Adena’s there again, this time sitting beside his bed holding tightly to his hand. “You’re not dead and you don’t get to die.”

“Why not? Tell me why not?”

“Because for every one of me, there’s someone else you save. Another crime you solve, another killer you put away. You speak for the dead, Detective Bayliss. If you die, who will do that?”

“The others. Let the others do it.” He tries to squeeze her hand, but his fingers won’t bend, won’t move. “Let them speak for _me_.”

“They already did. They killed the man that shot you. He died not long ago. You see? Even if you died, you’d never be a name in red.” She tilts her head and then rubs her free hand over her hair. “They got the bastard that did it.”

Tim frowns. “You shouldn’t use that kind of language.”

“You don’t get to die, Tim.” She rubs her hand over her hair again, but instead of dark hair, all he sees is shorn black stubble and brown skin. “I’m not gonna let you die.” Tim shakes his head, uncertain, and tries to squeeze her hand again. It’s bigger now, tight in his, squeezing back so hard and tight. “You hear me, Bayliss? I’m not gonna let you die.”

It’s not Adena’s voice anymore. It’s changed, thickened with tears. The light that surrounded her changes too, dims, and Tim blinks in the wake of it. Her red coat is tan. Her sweet, young face is hardened with too many late nights, too much bad coffee and too much death.

“Don’t even think about dying, Bayliss. Bastard’s already dead, there’s nobody that needs to die to avenge you.”

Tim tries to laugh but it sticks in his chest, echoing with pain. He squeezes his hand instead, surprised to feel his fingers give. Frank looks up and meets his eyes, tears flooding over his dark lashes and down his cheeks. Tim clears his throat and thinks about smiling, stopping when he realizes it’s likely to hurt too much. “Hey, Frank.”

“You’re not dead.” Frank’s words are reminiscent of after his stroke, slow and unsure. “You’re not dead.”

“No.” Tim closes his eyes again, the sound of the ICU floor flooding in on him. “No, not yet. I don’t think I’m finished yet.”  



End file.
